Good question. Yes, Frostbite is a winter seasonal. To be honest, sales-wise, it does okay but not amazing. It would be a tough bet to put money on it as a year-round offering. I find that Black IPAs resonate with a specific audience (to be blunt...THIS audience: i.e. educated and experienced beer people who are invested in the category) but are a tougher sell with the more casual drinker. One of the things that really sucks about the state of the beer market as it stands now, is that for distributing breweries who rely on package sales, it's hard to take risks. I could expound on this ad nauseum but I'll save that for a different discussion. In general, if you're not reasonably sure that a brand is going to succeed in the mass market--it's best not to do it at all or keep it very small (draught-only, or on-site only.) These days, off-premise (package sales) are so sketchy and space in grocery for craft beer is getting smaller not larger (here in NC we're seeing grocery space for craft beer contract by +/-10% ) so anything new takes the place of something existing. are you SURE the new thing will do better? I've made that gamble and been on the losing side more than I would like to admit. Black IPA would need to have a massive resurgence to take the slot of a key player somewhere else.
Bill, do you have a thought (opinion) on why the more casual craft beer drinker finds murky (i.e., Juicy/Hazy IPAs) to be 'attractive' but not a dark colored IPA? FWIW, when the Juicy/Hazy IPAs started taking a significant portion of the IPA market I personally found those beers to be unappealing. Who wants to drink a beer that looks like turkey gravy? Please do further discuss this topic (a different thread?). I would be very interested in this discussion and I would venture a guess so would many other BAs. How would you make this determination? Would it be based upon sales (and verbal feedback) at the brewery's taproom? Would you conduct a formal marketing analysis/survey? Other? It seems like breweries are in constant pursuit of the next 'new shiny thing' (e.g., Brut IPA, Cold IPA, etc.). Is there a specific reason(s) for contemporary contraction? In years past there was discussion that hard ciders were cutting into beer sales. Then more recently it was hard seltzers. I suppose even more recently it might be RTD (Ready To Drink) cocktails? If the issue is competition from "Beyond Beer" beverages is there a role that the Brewers Association can do here to 'better' market beer? I understand. It is a challenging task to guess what 'shiny new thing' will become to beer of choice. I suspect that most brewers would not have accurately guessed a decade+ ago the popularity of the new Juicy/Hazy IPA sub-style. Unfortunately at my local retailers (e.g., Retail Beer Distributor, Supermarkets, etc.) the shelves are saturated with these products and the vast majority of these brands are too old. Cheers!
Had Cold Sun at the Highland Park taproom in Chinatown last night and it was a damn good black IPA. The Citra was strong in it and the dark malt was more chocolate than coffee or roasted/charred grain. Really easy to drink
There's a lot to unpack here let me take this in pieces: The short answer is: Beverage alcohol is down. All beer is down. Craft Beer is down even more. Categories that aren't as popular/profitable as they have been in years past get trimmed to make room for other things that are (or may be.) It's not just craft beer sets that are shrinking, it's all beverage alcohol. Longer answer: You have to think about how grocery stores work. Grocery is the common denominator. Everybody eats so everybody shops. By-and-large grocery shoppers are very price sensitive so by design, most grocery items provide tiny margins. Every square-inch in grocery is monetized. Selves are planed down to the cubic inch to maximize sales. Either by margin (profitability) or rate of sale. Because most items have tiny margins presumably they sell fast thus accruing more total dollars. Additionally, tiny margins are are offset by things that make better margins: snacks and pre-packaged foods being one example. Alcohol being another. The downside to those tiny margins is a higher cost to the retailer, meaning they spend more to bring the product in. Grocery stores were very excited at the prospect of craft beer because it was popular and provided good margins. In years past, they were working hard to expand offerings in the hopes that beer would be a draw for customers and while they were there shopping for beer, they would buy snacks, or eggs, or whatever... raising the total sale (basket ring.) When the craft market began to cool, stores found themselves with a lot of expensive inventory that wasn't selling fast enough. The potential for big margins is there, but the fast sale (velocity) wasn't. Slower selling items began to get cut. Every store has a threshold rate-of-sale (likely in units per week) If you don't hit it, you're out. You'll notice this as smaller selection / lack of variety in favor of velocity (which favors larger national brands that have a higher rate-of-sale per item or SKU.) As the excitement around beer wanes, variety is less of a draw and velocity becomes more important. You'll note less square footage of cold beer space, more SKUs of high velocity items, and fewer total suppliers (brewers). Most consumers won't notice, but if your beloved brand disappears even though you know a distributor still carries it, that's why. Can the BA change it? hard to say. If I had to sum-up the whole craft market right now with one word, it would be "apathy." Consumers care less, which makes retailers care less, which makes distributors care less, which makes it REALLY tough for breweries to go-to-market and experiment spurring a vicious cycle. Fun fact: the tags on grocery shelves carry a lot of information if you know how to read them, They always list the item and price, but often they have velocity, distributor, ranking, and other things buried in the code. Also fun fact: most grocery stores somewhere in the cooler will have a QR code or a literal paper document with their shelf-set showing the items that are allowed to come in to be sold. Distributors and merchandisers read that to know where to put their products. Right now those store are planning the assortments for "spring sets" which will start changing in March/April and be the benchmark for the whole year.
I don’t see that many Black IPAs around these days. Actually found this Close Encounter from Pipeworks this week and had it today. It wasn’t great but was decent for sure.
Very informative. Thanks for sharing with us BA’s. I do agree, it seems the current craft beer buyers are more apethetic and are more like AAL drinkers but a preference for IPAs. Just go into a store grab the familiar IPA and head to checkout line. Older craft beer drinkers loved the variety of styles, experimentation of brewers and the occasional black IPA.
Bill, I can provide one anecdotal account about supermarket sales at my local Wegmans supermarket. I know I don’t need to educate you but Pennsylvania has its own unique alcohol sales laws. My local Wegmans supermarket used to sell beer in a separate area of the store near an entrance. Folks who wanted to buy beer could go through that entrance, pick up what they want, and purchase it at a dedicated cashier section in the area. At some point (3-4 years ago?) a decision was made to relocate the beers to the very middle of the store. There was no doubt in my mind this change was to make customers walk through the other grocery aisles to ‘entice’ purchases of groceries (i.e., increased revenue). Also, there was a change in the cashier system where previously you could only purchase the beer at the dedicated cashier section to then having two cashier aisles for a combined purchase of groceries and beer. Over the past year(s) they expanded (now 5 cashier aisles) for combined purchasing (because sales of beer increased?). I have not noticed a contraction (e.g., a 10% decrease in shelf/floor space) at my local Wegmans supermarket. I presume because beer sales are still brisk? And increasing the cashier aisles is an indicator of these brisk sales? This is just one supermarket in one town in Pennsylvania. For completeness I rarely go to my local Wegmans just to purchase beer. I purchase groceries and beer on the same trip. Cheers! Jack
Alive and well - love me some VT Black Ale!! Hoping to score one of my favorites - James from Hill Farmstead - later this week. Mitch Steele writes about the black IPA and its VT origins in his excellent (if a little outdated) book covering the history of IPAs. If I remember correctly he talks about Greg Noonan at Burlington’s VT pub and brewery and his initial recipes - then how they morphed at the Alchemist and Hill Farmstead.
I was speaking more in generalities than specifics and I don't know what's happening at Wegman's in particular. Depending on the individual grocer's business model, their approach can be different. One thing I can say, is that there is grocery and there is grocery. What I mean by that is that Wegmans has a particular business model. More premium and high-end than a standard grocery store. We have a handful of Wegmans here in NC (4, I think) and we also have another grocery chain: Lowe's Foods that specializes in a more up-market model and still buy A LOT of variety in beer BUT they only make-up a fraction (5%) of total sales. Those models still depend on the higher margins. Even so, I'd bet their sales are down (in dollars and volume) versus last year. That said, even in PA I think there are only something like 20 Wegman versus how many hundreds / thousands of "regular" grocery stores. The 10% reduction I'm talking about applies to mainline stores. Here in NC that's Food Lion (Ahold Delhaize nameplate) with 540 stores (or something like that) and Harris Teeter (Kroger nameplate) with 300-ish stores. Food Lion makes-up 30% of our grocery sales, Harris Teeter makes-up 25%. I'd wager that's true for most distributing brewers that operate in chain-heavy markets. Chain (grocery) sales make up like 70% of all off-premise (package) beer sales and I read somewhere recently that a full 20% of all package beer (1 out of 5) is sold through a Kroger nameplate. Crazy. If those store reduce space by a percentage, that represents A LOT of beer that isn't getting to market.
Yeah, I get that. That is why I stared: "This is just one supermarket in one town in Pennsylvania." And this is where Pennsylvania is different. Prior to a law change in 2016, the vast majority of packaged beer in PA were sold at businesses called Beer Distributors (I refer to them as Retail Beer Distributors in BA posts). I have no guess what percentage of beer in PA is now sold via Beer Distributors vs. other retailers (e.g., supermarkets) today. What I can report is that the two Beer Distributors in my town have not reduced the amount of beer they carry/sell; needless to say but lots of old product on the shelves which seems to be a perennial problem with craft beer and imports. Cheers!
Fair enough. It's the same in Minnesota (where I was for from 2018-2022) no real grocery sales, only liquor stores attached to grocery so the rule doesn't apply.
Some BAs opinion that when it comes to alcohol sales the US is comprised of 51 'countries': the 50 states plus DC. Cheers!
Bill, does the Brewers Association collect sales data on a per state basis? It would be interesting to see if for certain states (e.g., Oregon, Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, etc.) the sales of craft beer are OK/well while in other states the sales are decreasing. Cheers!
I'm sure they do, but they don't really publish that in granular detail as far as I know. They do publish production numbers which have sales attributed by channel, but a lot of that is self-reported by breweries and not 100% accurate. Real sales data is fairly proprietary and doesn't allow general access. Usually it comes from groups such as Nielson and Circana (formerly IRI) and is quite expensive to access. No data set is complete, either. There are anomalies in reporting and channels, etc. Lies, damn lies, and statistic, you know?
They are not, at least not right now. I was so happy to see this on the shelf I think I tinkled myself a lil bit... This beer is so good! Online said out of stock so surpised to see it.
